Issue TOC Print full article Print this page Download as PDF E-Mail this URL Flame the author     In this article Introduction SolarWinds.Net SolarWinds Engineers Edition More Products Reviewed Executive Summary How We Tested Report Card

Most engineers have items without which they feel naked. We're talking about the gadgets that fill your pockets and dangle from your belt. Whether it's a Leatherman, a Fluke Corp. tester or a utility knife, forgetting it on your bedside table is a sure way to ruin your day.

We set out to test the Leatherman equivalent of network-management tools--products that aren't big, fancy or expensive but get the job done. We accepted only tools that can be installed easily on a desktop or laptop and that are inexpensive enough that you won't need to go through five layers of approval to buy one. The products range in price from zero to $2,995, with all but one less than $1,000.

We tested Castle Rock Computing's SNMPc Workgroup Edition; MRTG, provided through GNU General Public License; Ipswitch's WhatsUp Gold 7; SolarWinds.Net's SolarWinds Engineers Edition; Visualware's VisualRoute; and WildPackets' EtherPeek NX with Network Tools in our Real-World Labs® at Syracuse University. We loaded them on PCs and went to town on the network. All these products do some of the tasks--such as discovering, mapping, monitoring and reporting--that their more complex (and expensive) brethren do, but they require way less maintenance.

We liked all the tools we tested, but if we could have only one it would be SolarWinds.Net's offering, which won our Editor's Choice award. This product has a boatload of handy-dandy utilities, all linked via a logical structure, and offers some security-checking capabilities. Also, SolarWinds' Remote TCP Session Reset utility let us pinpoint which lowlife was leaving telnet sessions up (ouch, the truth hurts).

We awarded our Best Value prize to MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher), which is free under GNU. Sure, you'll need to be comfortable with the CLI, but given the rich feature set you can't beat the price.